Enjoying the sunshine

[Hilary Hann]

This sub adult cheetah was having a roll and stretch in the dust prior to attempting to hunt with what we believed to be his mother. However, no matter how hard she tried, this fellow just mucked around and spoilt it all. Boys!;)

Masai Mara; midday sun; 7D; EF300 + 1.4TC; ISO400; 1/250; f11
I had a small aperture as the previous series of shots was trying to get both cheetah in focus, however, I would have been better at 1/500 and f8, in retrospect … just in case they did hunt.

[Ken Watkins]

A ittle bit more room on LHS would improve this a lot plus a slight decrease in contrast if it removes the "harsh" light.

If you open the JPEG in ACR you will see a lot of "blown" black, there also seems to be a slight blue cast.

[Harshad Barve]

Liked the pose and curled tail very much ,Image looks tack sharp to me. techs I will keep for experts but certain blue cast in white


no matter how hard she tried, this fellow just mucked around and spoilt it all. Boys!;)


ha ha , Striped boys do spoil mothers efforts quite often ;)

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hilary,
It is better to check the depth of field preview button to decide the depth of field you want. I like the pose. The tail tip has come off well.

It is often a pleasure watching the adolescents try to hunt under the watchful eyes of the mother. Often their youthful exuberance takes over. However, that is part of the learning experience.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Hilary, a very relaxed pose.

Would agree, that moving the crop a little to the lhs would perhaps benefit the image, however if that is al,l then it's no big deal breaker. Would also agree with Harshad that there is a blue cast, easy to fix too, either in Levels or Selective I have found. I know david T has other was also. Would agree on your conclusion about f stop, might have even gone further. ;)

TFS
Steve

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Hilary Great suggestions and agree On the color cast (minimal) there are several ways to take care but would use curves !!! Powerful tool !! David T has had some awesome tutorials on how to use !!!

[Rachel Hollander]

Hilary - I like the image and agree with the suggestions and about the blue cast. Tweaks will take it over the top.

TFS,
Rachel

[Hilary Hann]

Mea Culpa … I PUT the blue cast there when I used the selective white dropper in levels. Was hoping no one would notice too much as it was late and I was too tired to fix. :(

Sabya, I gave up using the DOF preview button about 15 years ago, never liked it. Now I rely on other things but get it wrong sometimes.

Plenty of room on the left so will re-crop.

David T IS awesome, let alone his tutorials.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

[Hilary Hann]

Here is a re-post.

[Ken Watkins]

Hilary,

This is a lot better, although there are still a lot of blown blacks.

[Hilary Hann]

Sorry Ken, but I don't have blown blacks showing on my raw file. I think if you take a processed jpeg into ACR you will have whatever I've adjusted the image to. On some of my more recent seminars the question of techs surrounding 'blacks' in an image has been dissected … a lot of the final selection comes to the visuals of the image. I chose to keep the blacks without too much detail as the final image needed to visually reflect what I felt and saw. When I processed to keep blacks with detail I would either end up with a muddy image or I would have to use luminosity masks to bring the detail back … neither option very palatable. With such small areas of black I saw no point in going this extra mile … now if I thought that the image itself was something I'd use then maybe I would go to this trouble, but in my eyes it is just another fairly pedestrian photograph of a nice cheetah. :)